Apple revealed Mac OS X Lion (Ver. 10.7) yesterday. This release is the 8th major release of the Apple’s Mac Operating System with more than 250 new features and 3,000 new developer APIs (According to Apple. The Mac has outpaced the PC industry every quarter for five years running and with OS X Lion Apple plan to keep extending their lead. Mac OS X Lion is the best version of OS X, yet is packed with innovative features. Lion will be the easiest OS X upgrade and at about 4GB, it is the size of an HD movie from the iTunes Store.

Main Features of Mac OS X Lion include: New Multi-Touch gestures, system-wide support for full screen apps, Mission Control, an innovative view and instant access of everything running on your Mac, the Mac App Store, built right into the OS, is the best place to find and explore great software, Launchpad, a new space for all your Mac apps, and Mail app, with completely new design.

Mac OS X Lion Requirements and Upgrade Details:

Lion requires an Intel-based Mac with a Core 2 Duo, i3, i5, i7 or Xeon processor and 2GB of RAM. The Lion upgrade can be installed on all your authorized personal Macs. The Mac OS X Lion Up-To-Date upgrade is available at no additional charge via the Mac App Store to you, if you purchased a “qualifying” new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller on or after June 6, 2011. You must request their Up-To-Date upgrade within 30 days of purchase of your Mac computer. If you purchase a “qualifying” Mac system between June 6, 2011 and the date when Lion is available in the Mac App Store, then you will have 30 days from Lion’s official release date to make this upgrade request.

Mac OS X Lion Price & Availability:

Mac OS X Lion will be available in July as an upgrade to Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard from the Mac App Store for $29.99 (for US customers). Mac OS X Lion Server requires Lion and will be available in July from the Mac App Store for $49.99 (US).

Lets view the new Features of Mac OS X Lion (Ver. 10.7) one by one:

Lion OS X Multi-Touch Gestures

New Multi-Touch gestures and fluid animations built into Lion let you interact directly with content on the screen for a more intuitive way to use your Mac. Multi-Touch gestures transform the way you interact with your Mac, making all you do more intuitive and direct. You can enjoy more fluid and realistic gesture responses, including rubber-band scrolling, page and image zoom, and full-screen swiping. All Mac notebooks ship with Multi-Touch trackpads and desktop Macs can use Apple’s Magic Trackpad.

Lion OS X Full Screen Apps:

Full screen apps take advantage of the entire display and are perfect for reading email, surfing the web or browsing photos, especially on a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. You can have multiple full-screen apps open at once — along with multiple standard-size apps. And it’s easy to switch between full-screen and desktop views. You can swipe from one window to another, between full screen apps, or back to your Desktop, Dashboard or Spaces without ever leaving full screen. iWork and iLife apps, as well as Safari, iTunes, Mail, FaceTime and others, all take advantage of Lion’s system-wide support for full screen apps.

Lion OS X Mission Control:

Mission Control combines Expose, full screen apps, Dashboard and Spaces into one unified experience for a bird’s eye view of every app and window running on your Mac. With a single swipe on the trackpad, your desktop zooms out to Mission Control. Think of it as the hub of your system: View everything and go anywhere with just a click. Here, you can view your open windows grouped by app, thumbnails of your full screen apps and your Dashboard, and allows you to instantly navigate anywhere with a tap.

The Mac App Store:

The Mac App Store is built into Lion and is the best place to browse thousands of great new Mac apps, buy them with your iTunes account, download and install them. Just like the App Store on iPad, you can start using The Mac App Store right away on all your Mac computers authorized for personal use. Apps automatically install directly to Launchpad, and with Lion’s release, and the Mac App Store keeps track of your apps and tells you when updates are available.

Lion OS X Launchpad:

Launchpad makes it easier than ever to find and launch any app with a single Multi-Touch gesture, and all your apps will be displayed in a new full screen layout. You can arrange your apps, group them together in folders, or delete them from your Mac with ease. And when you download any app from the Mac App Store, it will automatically appears in Launchpad.

Lion OS X Mail App – Redesigned:

Mac OS X Lion (Ver. 10.7) includes a completely redesigned Mail app with a widescreen layout. Conversations presents messages from the same thread in an elegant timeline showing each communication as it was sent, while intelligently hiding repeated text so the conversation is easy to follow. This redesigned Mail app also features search suggestions and search tokens, which help you find the messages you are looking for fast. And a new favorites bar gives you easy access to the folders you use most often. Mail includes built-in support for Microsoft Exchange 2010.

Additional Key Features in Mac OS X Lion:

Resume: This will conveniently bring your apps back exactly how you left them when you restart your Mac or quit and re-launch any app. And when you install software updates, you no longer need to save your work, close your apps, and spend valuable time setting everything up again.

Auto Save: This feature will automatically and continuously saves your documents as you work on your Mac. It’s time to stop worrying about saving your work!

Versions: This new OS X feature will automatically records the history of your document as you create it, and gives you an easy way to review the past works, restore and even copy and paste from previous versions. You might have seen this feature in many leading Image editing software.

AirDrop: this will find nearby Macs and automatically sets up a peer-to-peer wireless connection to make transferring files quick and easy – no Wi-Fi network required, no complicated setup and no any special installations.

Lion Server: With this App, any normal Mac system can be turned into a fully functional Server. OS X Lion Server includes some key enhancements, which will give you more control of Mac server and also to the users who access it. The Server app (new in Lion Server) features a setup assistant, which will let you know the server configuration process step by step. Profile Manager lets you remotely manage computers running Lion and iOS devices such as iPad and iPhone. You can even send updates to your users wirelessly via push notifications. Lion Server also adds file-sharing capabilities for iPad and includes improvements to Wiki Server, iCal Server, and Mail Server; and comes with Xsan built-in.

I hope this new version of Mac OS X lineup will make a tough competition with Microsoft Windows platform and let’s wait for the Windows 8 release, to see the new features on their lineup. However, there are 250+ new features in Mac OS X Lion.